Saturday, July 31, 2010

No blogging

For the second time in a couple of weeks now, I've gone several days without posting anything. I continue to deal with health issues, generally feeling awful, and what energy I do have must go to other, more pressing priorities, notably family and work. And, indeed, it has been an extremely busy time at work lately.

I hope to be back at it soon -- needless to say, I have a lot to say, even in the middle of summer, and it's been quite frustrating not being able to let it out.

It's a long weekend here in Ontario, with a civic holiday on Monday, and I intend to rest as much as possible, but I'll blog when I can. In the meantime, make sure to keep checking back. My fantastic co-bloggers keep putting up great posts.

No Muslims allowed!

I have to be thankful to the Anti-Defamation League, for without them, I might not be living here and they've done much to silence the skinheads and neo-Nazis and Jew haters that would still kill us all if they could. They've done much to get Church printing presses to stop printing the infamous "protocols" fraud and making them stop teaching that kill Christian babies for their blood. But as I've said countless times, being persecuted doesn't make one virtuous.

The ADL has jumped on the out-of-control bandwagon, protesting the building of the "Ground Zero Mosque" which isn't a mosque and isn't at Ground Zero. I don't know how to describe that without displaying it as offensive to the freedom of religion which is one of the few things an American can point to as being fundamentally American in origin, albeit no longer unique.

To what do we owe the self-righteous attitude behind it? We're furious at a group of terrorists almost small enough to fill a school bus and most of whom are dead: so furious that we don't want anyone to worship the God of Abraham in a different way within our sight. So furious that we will ignore the prohibition against establishing a religion as permissible or not permissible or restricting the rights of one as opposed to another. If Muslims have no right to a community center in New York, they have no right to a community and if they have not that, we have not reason to see this as a country worth supporting

Friday, July 30, 2010

"You vote 'yes' if you believe 'yes.'"

The House was debating a bill last night that would provide up to $7.4 billion in health care aid to rescue and recovery workers who have faced health problems since their work in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The bill ultimately failed to get the needed two-thirds majority, 255-159, and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was not happy about it. Not one bit.

Think of the children

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to amend the Constitution to take away citizenship of people born in this country based on the child's parents' legal status.

“I may introduce a constitutional amendment that changes the rules if you have a child here,” Graham said during an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake, that we should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child’s automatically not a citizen.”

That raises a few questions. First, if the child is not a citizen of the United States, what country is he or she a citizen of? What if one parent is a legal resident or citizen of the United States and the other isn't? What if the child needs immediate medical attention? What if the child is the result of rape or incest?

The Republicans are supposed to be the ones who were all about thinking of the children; that they would do everything they possibly could to prevent abortions and bring that precious life into the world. Changing the law would lead to more abortions: if an undocumented immigrant becomes pregnant -- it's not always planned, y'know -- and sees that there's no chance the child will be granted citizenship, rather than carry the child to term, the next stop is an abortion clinic, or worse. And if the child is born, how many of them will be abandoned on doorsteps or dumped in trash cans?

Lindsey Graham is supposed to be one of the "reasonable" Republicans nowadays.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Usual Suspects

There was plenty of insanity to go around this week, most of it from the usual suspects.

1. Several prominent Republicans (who apparently all failed algebra) keep claiming that continuing tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans will not increase the deficit. After all, every time you give a rich person a tax cut, an Angel gets a Tiffany watch.

2. Elisabeth Hasselback (who apparently had her brain voted off the island on Survivor) stated that the reason middle age women "become gay" is because middle age men are only interested in younger women. So I guess we can expect another 10,000,000 single and widowed women to run out and buy Melissa Ethridge albums.

3. Sarah Palin (who apparently enjoys proving she is one of the dumbest people to ever be born) complained about Obama going on The View. Then again, maybe Palin has a point, since Obama had to be in the same room as Hasselback.

4. Oliver Stone (who apparently has been palling around with Mel Gibson) called the media "Jewish dominated" and said the Nazis did far more damage to the Russians than the Jews. Stone has also stated that Hitler was a scapegoat. As a note, Oliver Stone is Jewish.

5. Zack Wamp (who apparently left his heart in the Potomac) joined the chorus of the "warm-hearted" right said this about the unemployed "...And this is creating a culture of dependence which we do not need. We want people out there scraping and clawing and looking for work and not just sitting back waiting...." Yep, because with those $350 checks, those lazy welfare queens can buy 350 lottery tickets.

6. Lindsay Graham (who apparently will do anything to get the Teabaggers on his side) wants to rewrite the 14th Amendment, overturning the clause that says anyone born on US soil is a citizen. Unmarried, childless, "I am not gay" Lindsay Graham wants to change a portion of the constitution having to do with children.

7. Michael Clemente, Senior Vice President of News for Fox News (who apparently can sleep at night despite the fact his job is contributing to the decline and fall of America) claimed there was a breakdown in the "system" by allowing the Shirely Sherrod story to get on air before it was properly vetted. Yep - there was a breakdown - they got caught in propagating the lie this time.

8. The Iowa GOP (who apparently did not talk to Orly Taitz) wants to strip Obama of his US citizenship for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. What I want to know, is how the Iowa GOP is going to do this considering Obama is Kenyan born Muslim socialist who doesn't even have a green card.

9. Congress (who apparently really live in a Video Game) took weeks to find $33 billion to help 2.5 million Americans fighting to keep food on their tables, but took about an hour to to find $60 billion to help Americans fight 50 Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.

10. The Department of Defense (who apparently hired Arthur Andersen as their accountants) cannot account for 96% of the $9 billion dollars it allocated to Iraq for reconstruction. They might not be able to account for it, but i would bet $8.1 billion that Halliburton and a few other choice firms can.

11. Tom Tancredo (who apparently still hates immigrants) wants to impeach Obama. Get in line Tom, so does every other person in Congress and will undoubtedly begin proceedings if they take back the House.

12. Phyllis Schlafly (who apparently is still alive) said ""Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider." Maybe Schlafly should listen to Hasselback, and allow those women to marry each other.

Muslims hate dogs

Shortly before I left the Midwest for Florida, a local Methodist Church with a largely Korean congregation was spray painted with the message: "Chines go home." Swastikas were spray painted on sidewalks and a leader of a self-styled Evangelist Church murdered a black Football coach and shot up a car containing two local Korean-Americans in protest of the growing ethnic diversity of America. Yes, it was an upscale suburb of Chicago and yes, most people were appalled. Since then, we've become more inured to such things, and since then, major political groups have become indistinguishable from what was a demented, lunatic fringe. The largest news disseminator in the country has become a preacher of the same kind of rage -- and we listen as disciples at the feet of wisdom.

I can't act surprised to see a similar fear and loathing phenomenon pervading my Florida neighborhood. No shots are being fired, but it's hard to come away from any social gathering without that sick, sinking feeling in my stomach resulting from some offhand remark about Mexicans. What must they be thinking of me? Is anyone really a bigot as concerns only one group? I think not. Is such bigotry confined to the uneducated? Hardly: the Beck Brigade contains the majority of millionaires I know and none who have anything to worry about from some undocumented day-laborer hanging around the Home Depot parking lot. Yet they do. They worry themselves sick that our government is being taken over by Black people who will make sure that no other black people will have to work for a living any more. They worry themselves sick that American Muslims will somehow institute Sharia and set aside the constitution, while they themselves see that tattered document as an impediment to Christian sovereignty.

"Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant [sic] on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law...."

reads an anonymous e-mail tied to a California Tea Party group. Where I live, such a thing is likely to be as sermon to the converted. It's a tenet as firmly adhered to as that "Obamacare" depends on "death panels" to keep costs down and that the US constitution is meant to subjugate all people under Christian law. But there are no Mosques here, no Islamic community centers as there are in other parts of the country. In California, in Tennessee, in New York and elsewhere, the bigoted scum that is America is being called upon to disrupt prayer with loud protest and being encouraged to bring dogs: because Muslims "hate dogs."

When I was a young man, traveling and studying in Europe, I heatedly defended my country against pervasive charges of racism and bigotry and imperialism, pointing to the strides being made in the 1960's. I was wrong, I was a fool and I wish I had not been. We have been jailing people for their political thoughts since the beginning, we replaced slavery with repression and subjugation, we've had laws reducing the rights of one ethnic group after another. We've denied entry and we have expelled citizens for their racial origins. We whine about invasive government while we use it to invade the lives of millions. We've made a straw devil out of those who have worked to undo the intrinsic hatred that is American culture. We have, save for a few glorious moments, been cowards, bullies and barbarians as likely to tear our own countrymen apart as the enemies, real and imagined, from without. There is no patriotism, no sense of a common goal, only flag waving and warriors at war -- and fear, always the fear.

Have we forsaken our ideals or did we ever really have any beyond "every man for himself" and "fuck you?"

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Arizona burning

He's"not going to put up with any civil disobedience" said the notorious Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff on Good Morning America. No doubt he expects to see some, as the infamous Arizona "show me your papers" law goes into effect tomorrow. Protest is all "hype" anyway and it's "a crime to be here illegally and everyone should enforce" it. Everyone?It sounds like fun and I can't wait to start enforcing the law myself -- I mean all the laws, of course and since I have the firepower, why not stop every blond person I see and make him prove he's not Canadian? It's all a cowboy movie to sheriff Joe Arpaio, so why shouldn't I play along? But, of course, it's not the law in general that we should all enforce, it's the infamous Arizona law reducing the rights of anyone looking to any Arizona Cop like he has Native American ancestry.

But why pick on this comic book villain? The idea is widely popular, particularly in the old Confederate states, where good manners, big hearts and small minds go hand in hand. Civil disobedience is, in fact, just what we need to clog up the courts and disable and embarrass the damned fools who pretend it's all about the law and not a distraction to hide another expansion of police power. We need just what was so effective in the 1960's; thousands and thousands of people to flood the streets of Arizona looking illegal. We need a spectacle: sit-ins, marches, civil disobedience, dogs, water cannons and an impotent, sputtering, apoplectic, beer-belly Joe looking like the Dukes of Hazzard relic he is.

Now, before you reach for some more canned rage: no, I'm not in favor of allowing undocumented workers to remain, or letting people overstay their visas, just don't tell me we have to become a brutal, inhumane police state to correct the problem and if it isn't all based on racial purity, tell me why we don't know or care how many Canadians or Englishmen are working here and living here without benefit of citizenship.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Happy now?

Is the Gulf of Mexico becoming the cesspool of the Oil business; the repository of all the spills resulting from accidents, neglect, irresponsible drilling and all the other inevitable situations we refuse to listen to while sneering at "enviros" and calling for more oil whatever the cost?

Sure it is, but we may just be beginning to give a damn, now that it's appearing that many of us won't live to see that section of the great mother of life, the World Ocean, and it's shorelines restored to any kind of health.

We have another gusher, apparently. Just off the coast near New Orleans where a barge has reportedly crashed into a well spilling more oil just where we need it least and just where we have our equipment otherwise occupied. It hasn't been the first time, and it won't be the last, but maybe now we're starting to realize that you can't get all the world's oil out of the ground without the nasty consequences we've been ignoring. You can't transport it by ship or by pipeline and you can't pump it without leaks and spills and fires and of course, loss of life.

Yes, that's right, you're paying three bucks a gallon -- much, much less than other countries do and all our efforts to ruin what's left of what's worth keeping in our country aren't going to reduce that price. It's all going to get worse until you start listening to those hippie, treehugging, sandal wearing weirdos and stop listening to the bought and paid for politicians who refuse to do a damned thing that might stop the campaign contributions and free propaganda that keep them in office. The rich TV blowhards, your friends, your neighbors and all their stupid stories about vast reserves of oil ready to pour into your tanks if only the government and those environmental freaks would let our friends at Exxon sell it to China and Japan at a higher price than we want to pay.

I'd like to blame it all on Republicans, like the ones in Florida who refuse to take any steps whatever to keep the oil off our shores ( or the industrial and agricultural waste that poison our inland waters) but even the President we elected in our naivete, thinking that he could be immune, has been tainted.

Oil corrupts. Big oil corrupts big time, whether it's in Nigeria, Venezuela or Iraq. It's corrupted us and has corrupted presidents since the Harding administration. But before you think I'm going into another partisan rant, think again. It's us - it's you who elect these people. It's the American people, the snickering snarky states of America looking for scapegoats while we support the Palins and the McCains and the Cheneys and the Bush's who tell us we need more oil and that we need only to disregard all prudence to get and use more of it and faster.

Yes, they either bought or bamboozled Obama into thinking it was all so safe despite the shaky safety record and now they want you to forget that we all cooperated in eliminating all traces of safety standards -- you know, the things we've been dumb enough to see as "Communism.." It's us, the soccer moms, the commuters, the SUV fashionistas who don't think past our daily concerns and laugh at the concept of giving a damn about the future. You wanted oil and you've got oil. Are you happy now?

How the Bush tax cuts are a winning issue for Democrats

With the Bush tax cuts (on both the wealthy and middle class) set to expire, Democrats have a great opportunity to back Republicans into a corner and to win both politically and on policy, argues Jon Chait:

The key factor here is that, just as Republicans got to frame the debate in 2001 by combining the tax cuts into an up or down vote, Democrats can frame the debate now by separating the policies Republicans pretend to care about from the ones they actually care about. Republicans want to have a vote on the whole collection of Bush-era tax cuts. Democrats shouldn't give it to them. You hold a separate vote on the middle class portion and dare them to oppose it.

Basically, Democrats can push a vote on extending only the middle-class tax cuts. If Republicans filibuster it in the Senate because what they really want is an extension on upper-class cuts, it'll look like they support middle-class tax hikes and/or like their key priority is ("wildly unpopular") tax cuts for the wealthy, which it is, while Democrats will be able to make the case that they tried to extend the cuts but were blocked by an opposition party that cares more about the rich than about ordinary Americans. But if they don't, Democrats will be able to take credit for keeping middle-class taxes down and can avoid a vote on extending the upper-class cuts altogether while also criticizing Republicans for supporting tax cuts for the wealthy.

In other words, Democrats could come out of this with a winning political issue with which to hammer Republicans and either additional revenue or a more progressive tax code, each of which serves core Democratic interests (higher government spending or fairer taxation).

In a way, it's a can't-lose situation. Except that Democrats usually find a way to lose. I hope Chait is right, but I fear that Democrats will mess this up somehow.

Wiki The Witch

Apparently, Osama bin Laden has been dead for nearly six years now, which is in keeping with some of the videotapes that have been released since that time, in which bin Laden "appears" but does not say anything truly contemporary to the time of those tapes (there are audio tapes that suggest he may still be alive, of course, but faking a voice is not that hard).

Apparently, we had multiple opportunities to capture him, knowing ahead of time on at least three occasions where he would be and with whom, yet we either failed to act or decided to let events play out. Apparently, Iran and North Korea have allied themselves with Al Qaeda, which explains much of the aggression of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

And there are some "duh!" moments, too, such as a "secret" Senate report that indicates that we had bin Laden in our hands in 2001, yet let him get away. A simple perusal of the nightly television programming on The HIstory Channel will show that, indeed, that's been public knowledge for some time, and that this is hardly a revelation. We had him in the Tora Bora region, and had surrounded the hilltop cave where he hid, but missed picking him up when our Afghan allies...um...well...went home to supper!

Nevermind that Pakistan has been as Pakistan has always been, an unreliable ally when it comes to Afghanistan. Nevermind that the armed forces in Afghanistan have been questionable in some of their tactics, to say the least. No, it's all about the public perception of the war and the public perception of our chances there.

Which brings us back to the essential question: why are we there? That's the question Congress doesn't want to raise at this time, since it is our sole focus on that region (Iraq pretty much having settled into a quiet unease). It is the only war we should have been fighting, the only war that ever really mattered and the war we had to win.

Iraq was a choice. Afghanistan was an imperative, and I say that as someone who opposes war, full stop. I don't believe either war was necessary, but understanding the pulse of the nation at the time, and understanding that most Americans are too immature to accept a war waged without lots of colorful explosions and dying enemy soldiers, Afghanistan harbored the people who injured us. I understand that war had to be fought.

Much inferential evidence suggests, no, insists that the reason we allowed ourselves to be distracted with Saddam Hussein and Iraq was a plan on the part of neo-conservatives that would brand America forever an empire. Hussein stood between us and wresting South Asia for ourselves and our domestic purposes. The Wolfowitz Doctrine spells that out quite plainly.

Conveniently, the time was right to strike. Strategically, it was the single stupidest strategy we could have pursued just into a mild recession and just after a weakening blow to our psyche. We had to fight in Afghanistan. We didn't have to open a second front. The greed of these assholes is almost palpable.

And now we have what we have: two lost wars and an aborted attempt at creating a "New American Century" and American empire (which history suggests would have been fleeting and ultimately futile and debilitating).

I haz a sad, but thank Wikileaks for bringing out the truth. No need to burn them.

Dionne: Time to stop cowering before conservative propaganda

Yesterday at WaPo, E.J. Dionne responded to the Shirley Sherrod fiasco with a blistering indictment of the mainstream media. It's worth a read in full, but here are a couple of key passages:

The smearing of Shirley Sherrod ought to be a turning point in American politics. This is not, as the now-trivialized phrase has it, a "teachable moment." It is a time for action.

The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that "fairness" requires treating extremist rants as "one side of the story." And there can be no more shilly-shallying about the fact that racial backlash politics is becoming an important component of the campaign against President Obama and against progressives in this year's election.

*****

The traditional media are so petrified of being called "liberal" that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors. Mainstream journalists regularly criticize themselves for not jumping fast enough or high enough when the Fox crowd demands coverage of one of their attack lines.

*****

The Sherrod case should be the end of the line. If Obama hates the current media climate, he should stop overreacting to it. And the mainstream media should stop being afraid of insisting on the difference between news and propaganda.

Dionne is right, but -- call me a cynic (or a realist) -- don't expect the non-conservative media to learn anything from this, let alone to change their ways. Fox, Breitbart, Limbaugh, and the rest will continue to terrorize them into submission and thereby to determine the dominant narratives.

And the victims will continue to be the truth and the American people.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Craziest Republican of the Day: Ron Ramsey

Ron Ramsey is afraid of Muslims. Ron Ramsey probably hates Muslims. Ron Ramsey is ignorant of Islam. Like so many Republicans these days, Ron Ramsey is a fearmongering bigot:

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, currently running third in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary race, says he's not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to the followers of the world's second-largest faith, Islam.

At a recent event in Hamilton County, Ramsey was asked by a man in the audience about the "threat that's invading our country from the Muslims." Ramsey proclaimed his support for the Constitution and the whole "Congress shall make no law" thing when it comes to religion. But he also said that Islam, arguably, is less a faith than it is a "cult."

"Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it," Ramsey said. "Now certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time this is something we are going to have to face."

*****

"Now, you know, I'm all about freedom of religion. I value the First Amendment as much as I value the Second Amendment as much as I value the Tenth Amendment and on and on and on," he said. "But you cross the line when they try to start bringing Sharia Law here to the state of Tennessee -- to the United States. We live under our Constitution and they live under our Constitution."

Ron Ramsey obviously isn't "all about freedom of religion" and doesn't "value the First Amendment" at all. For him, religion is only free if it's a religion of which he approves. It is startlingly ignorant to call Islam a "cult," this one of the largest religions in the world, but nothing coming from the mouth of a Republican should startle.

Muslims are obviously not trying to impose Sharia law on America, nor even in their own communities, and it is similarly ignorant to suggest that all Muslims practice it, and particularly American Muslims, the vast majority of whom are proud and loyal Americans and just as capable of separating their faith from secular law as any Christian or Jew. (Actually, if you want to find Americans who wish to impose intolerant and bloodthirsty religious law on America, look no further than the theocratic-fundamentalist Christian Right. There is the real danger to the Constitution and to the American way of life, not Muslims, a distinct minority that, made up mostly of new Americans, wants only to fit in and live the American Dream.)

But Ron Ramsey is playing directly to the bigotry and irrational fears of Tennesseeans:

The question, Ramsey mused, was related to the simmering topic of a new Muslim community center scheduled to be built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Ramsey, like many conservatives weighing in on the debate, mistakenly confused the center with a mosque -- which Murfreesboro already has -- and then proceeded to foment fears that Sharia saw would be practiced by Muslims there.

Ron Ramsey, in addition to being a hateful bigot, is an idiot. It's probably too kind to call him crazy. But he gets our nod today, along with our disgust.

Tennessee deserves better, as does America, supposedly a land of liberty. But neither will get what it deserves from the Republican Party, which these days is all about dividing the country, and the world, into us and them, and scapegoating the Other -- whatever it does not like, whatever it does not understand -- as the enemy.

Pure vile

Jeffrey Lord, some alleged human being who writes at The American Spectator, claims that Shirley Sherrod lied when she told the story that a relative of hers, Bobby Hall, was beaten to death while in the custody in Georgia. According to Mr. Lord's definition of what a true lynching is, the murderers didn't use a rope. No rope, no hanging, no lynching.

I can understand the right wing being put out because their completely fabricated story turned to shit right in their hands. I can even understand why they're trying so hard to rescue what's left of their dignity without actually admitting any culpability in promoting Andrew Breibart's lies. But this weaselly mealy-mouthed dismissal of a brutal murder is so far beneath contempt that it's hard to imagine anyone with any morals or sense of decency defending it.

Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!

There are only a few times a decade that I can be proud of my church. Today is one time:

With a laying on of hands, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Sunday welcomed into its fold seven openly gay pastors who had until recently been barred from the church’s ministry.

A couple of notes to make here. First, the Lutheran Evangelical Church is essentially the Roman Catholic Church without the Pope and all the trappings therein. As the first Protestant sect, it remains the one most closely tied to the RCC and has even made attempts to reincorporate into the fold. As such, it can be and has been at points a bellwether for the papal congregations. One hopes that is the case here, as well.

Second, about that second word in its name..."Evangelical". While the Lutheran church in America is not the first evangelical church to recognize gay ministers and/or pastors, it is the most conservative church to do so. Indeed, parts of its doctrine makes churches like the Southern Baptists look practically liberal. This development will put enormous pressure on other evangelical sects to follow, and also opens up the question of gay marriage in places like California, where Proposition 8 passed largely on the basis of votes from evangelicals, white and black.

I have long believed that marriage ought to be available to any two consenting adults. It seems silly to try to keep two people from forming a more perfect union, when our own nation is so divided to begin with.